1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to enzyme electrodes for measurement of residual agricultural chemicals, sometimes, referred to as “residual pesticides”. The present invention is also directed to a tyrosinase enzyme electrode containing metal nanoparticles and methods of producing such electrodes.
2. Background Art
Conventional analysis methods for residual agricultural chemical components present in agricultural products, drinking water, etc. include: GC (gas chromatography), GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy), LC (liquid chromatography), LC/MS (liquid chromatography/mass spectroscopy) and the like. Such methods require complicated pre-treatments of samples and a long time for subsequent analysis. The above methods are therefore not applicable to real time measurement.
In order to overcome the problems described above, a variety of measurement methods have been developed. Korean Patent Gazette No. 171159 provides an illustrative example of one measurement method, wherein phenol waste is removed using thermal resistant tyrosinase. This method comprises converting phenol into tyrosine, precipitating the converted tyrosine in a medium and separating the precipitated tyrosine from the medium, which is different from techniques for detection of agricultural chemical components.
Further, Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-159422 (Publication No. 2004-361220) discloses a device for detecting residual agricultural chemicals. The existence of residual agricultural chemicals in a sample are detected by determining characteristics of an LC resonator based on a changeable dielectric constant of the sample, however, this publication does not describe technical methods to improve measurement sensitivity of the residual agricultural chemicals.
In addition, Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-89137 (Publication No. 2005-270008) discloses an analysis method for residual agricultural chemicals, describing a method for high sensitivity detection of carbamate based agricultural chemicals. However this method only has the ability to detect a limited number of species of agricultural chemical components which are present.
As described above, conventional methods for detection of residual agricultural chemicals still have a problem of limited sensitivity and/or measurement range.